Word: forstered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Margaret Forster's Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminian, 1839-1939 is an important contribution to this endeavor. Forster chronicles the lives and accomplishments of eight women, each of whom helped bring about a significant change in the status of British or American women. Forster begins by disclaiming any intent to write a comprehensive history of the beginnings of the feminist movement. Instead, she has chosen to write about the women whose struggles have affected her directly: "In many ways, I myself am the product of everything the eight women in this book fought for--much more so than...
...Forster sees feminist history as the removal of a series of traps, which nonetheless leaves unanswered some of the same questions it started with. What keeps women from striking out in the same way as men do? Why do women seem to have to sacrifice more for the same accomplishments? Should women adopt male codes of behavior entering professions that have traditionally been closed to them? Should they make the same mistakes as men have...
...first and most obvious trap for 19th-century women was the institution of marriage. Forster's book begins with an essay on Carohne Norton, an English woman who was separated from her husband after he had beaten her several times Upon being separated Norton discovered to her horror that her husband had the legal right to keep her from secing her children and that he was the owner of any money she inherited of earned These two discoveries led her to crisade against the offending laws...
According to Forster, Caroline Norton did not have the idea that the interion social status of women should be radically altered just that women should be accorded the same protection as other socially vulnerable groups But Norton was in fact asking For an in stitutional reform a marriage into an arrangement mutually benetial to both women and men Even after separating from her husbad Norton was careful not ot consort with men lest her reputation, an theirs be harmend...
...feminist struggle seems one which makes gains little by little: Forster says that it requires a steady stream of women who are willing to serve as the "example on which a particular law shall be reformed." To play this role, for Norton as for other women, entails, a tremendous personal sacrifice...